There is an immense reservoir of good will for public libraries and yet public libraries are struggling to stay afloat. Why is this? It seems that in our marketing efforts, we are being incredibly obtuse. But in what ways? How do we tap into Ghawar Field of public love for libraries? How do we make libraries sticky? Let's discuss.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

One of the most vexing pieces of library outreach is doing a presentation, getting people all excited about library resources, and then navigating the shoals of getting a library card into their hands. My library has an online application for city resident cards but if a person wanted (or needed) to get a library card through their business, the only option was the paper route.

Until now.

With the help of Google documents, I put together an online form that gathers the necessary information, dumps the data into a spreadsheet for easy cutting/pasting into Dynix, and voila! a new library card is born.